Students call St Xavier's decision to conduct offline exams cold and inhumane, no respite after Edu Minister's intervention

The college has been facing resistance from students who claim they have not been given enough time to prepare for the exams
St Xavier's College, Mumbai | Pic: Wikimedia Commons
St Xavier's College, Mumbai | Pic: Wikimedia Commons

The students and the administration at St Xavier's College, Mumbai, are clashing head-on over the conduct of offline exams, which are scheduled to begin on March 28. Despite protests and appeals from the students, the college is adamant about conducting the exam offline. To this effect, a mock test will be conducted on Thursday, March 24 to "acclimatise students in the practice of writing", said a report by IANS.

The students, on the other hand, say that they have not attended lectures physically for the last two years due to COVID lockdowns and restrictions. All lectures, including practical sessions for students from the Science streams, have been conducted online. In a bid to lodge their protest, the students have racked up 1,287 signatures in their appeal against the decision. However, when they submitted the petition to the administration, all they got in response from Principal Rajendra Shinde was an offer to provide accommodation to outstation students at "various venues, including the college hostels". Changes have also reportedly been made to the timetable of the exams, although the students claim that these are purely cosmetic and do not provide any relief. The college website already has the seating arrangements for the exams. However, lectures are still going on and are scheduled to end only on March 26. With no study leaves or extra time to attempt theory questions, the students claim that this gives them hardly any time to prepare.

In fact, the matter had also reached Maharashtra's Higher Education Minister, Uday Sumant, who had been approached by the students for an intervention. He, in turn, directed the Joint Director of Education, Sonali Rode, to write a letter to the colleges. In a statement, the Joint Director said, "We are requesting colleges who have decided to hold Semester VI examinations offline to hold them online since there will be a disparity in marks and students will not be tested on common grounds. To ensure there is no academic loss to the students, we are requesting colleges to hold exams online."

According to Section 72 (10) of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act 2016, autonomous colleges have the right to design programmes and methods of evaluation by themselves. Any instruction by the Joint Director is not legally binding and St Xavier's, which is affiliated with Mumbai University, has now claimed that this move is in line with the autonomy granted to them by the University Grants Commission to raise academic standards. It is to be noted that Mumbai University has decided to conduct its final exams online.

In a long message addressed to students of St Xavier's College, Principal Shinde justified his decision. He also added that, if required, students can sit for "additional exams in October 2022". The students continue to maintain that the decision is "cold and inhumane". "The college has ditched us at the last moment. How can Principal Shinde suggest that we take the additional examination in 2022? Will we want to forfeit this academic year? Shinde said our online scores will not be accepted abroad but how does it matter in a COVID year? What about students from Mumbai University? He has succeeded in pulling the wool over our eyes," a student said.

"All we want is for us to be treated at par with the other students of Mumbai University. The assessment of all students should be common for all of us. If we are being asked to write offline exams, then the rest of the university students should also be assessed through offline exams as well," added the student. "The psychological impact of being asked to suddenly write an examination paper within a stipulated time period, even if it is a combination of MCQs and lengthy answers, has not been assessed by the college," said a professor of the college. "The issue has become one of prestige. Human sympathy has been thrown out of the window. Students are finding it difficult, financially, to travel to Mumbai to take the exams,"  added the professor.

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